Various electrical grounding techniques have been utilized in the electric power and telecommunications industries in the United States to protect electrical/electronic equipment installations from damage otherwise caused by natural phenomena such as lightning strikes to which the equipment installations may be exposed.
Such known techniques include the use of wires and rods of copper or another electrically conductive metal electrically connected to the equipment installations and buried or driven into the earth, chemical grounding rods whose constituent electrically-conductive chemicals leach and dissipate into adjacent earth soil to be effective, and electrical conductors embedded in a protective cementitious casing containing a powdered amorphous graphite constituent.
However, the use of such known grounding techniques has frequently been limited, often because of total-cost considerations or because technical requirements such as low electrical current surge impedance have proved to be unobtainable. Often specific equipment application may involve installation sites with limited available ground areas, with high-resistivity soils, or with shallow soil depths to bedrock.
I have discovered that in many known electrical/electronic equipment installations having stringent technical requirements such requirements can be met and disadvantages of the prior art overcome through utilization of a novel equipment groundbed electrode construction.
Other advantages of the present invention will likely become apparent from careful consideration of the summaries, detailed descriptions, and claims which follow.